Loaded: Apple desktops get a refresh

March 3, 2009

Transcript

>> Apple gets a refresh on their desktop line. T-Mobile offers its Unlimited Loyalty Plan nationwide and the Touch Book with a removable screen. It's Tuesday, March 3, I'm Mark Licea and it's time to get Loaded.
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>> Apple's new iMac, Mac Mini and Mac Pro models are out. The new 24-inch iMac has a 30% larger screen and twice the memory and storage capacity as the previous 20-inch model. It's priced at 1499. They've also lowered the price of the new iMac's 20-inch model to 1199. The new Mac Mini will have the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics just like the aluminum MacBooks and it all starts at 599. They're also claiming that the new Mac Mini is the world's most energy efficient desktop. And finally the new Mac Pro is being offered for $300 less than the previous model and it comes with Intel's super fast Nehalem Xeon processor in the high performance graphics card. It starts at 2499. Now, the Pro will be available until next week, but both the Mac Mini and the iMac are available now. All three products come with Mac OS X's Leopard and iLife '09. For more information, head on over to CNET.com. T-Mobile's trial run of unlimited calling for 50 bucks a month did not last long -- trial over. Now, everyone can get it, not just people in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's called the Unlimited Loyalty Plan and it gives you unlimited nationwide calling, although you do have to have been a T-Mobile subscriber for at least 22 months. This doesn't include texting or data, but it's still a great deal. You have to be an existing T-Mobile customer to be eligible. Skype will soon be offering voice-to-text messaging. The company is working with SpinVox to add the option for both Windows and Mac and users can leave either an email or an SMS. You will pay for it though. Skype is charging 25 cents per message in addition to the standard text messaging rate. And one annoying feature is that if the message is unintelligible or garbled the words will be converted into question marks and they'll still charge you. The service will be available in English, Spanish, French and German. Here's something I haven't seen before. Behold the Touch Book by company called Always. It's basically a netbook, but it has a removable screen that slides out of its keyboard dock to act as a fully functional touchscreen tablet. Now, I'm not sure why I would need this, but I think it's cool enough to covet. It runs Linux, has a 3D touchable interface and it's expected to cost only $299 when it launches sometime this spring. You can find more at alwaysinnovating.com. Blueprints for the president's helicopter Marine One may have been hacked. The Internet security company Tiversa reported discovering the security breach that transferred engineering updates, avionic schematics and computer network information on the helicopter. Apparently one of the defense contractors had a file sharing program on the same system that contained the Marine One Blueprints. Even more frightening that information was copied at some point to an Iranian IP address. Now all global politics decide it's pretty incredible that a defense contractor working for the president would install peer-to-peer software on the same system. Not a good idea. This week the Obama administration switched from using YouTube to an in-house video streaming service for their weekly presidential radio address. This was likely a response to a number of privacy complaints about the YouTube player adding cookies which allow websites to track your web usage and keep you logged in to their services. The Obama administration says that the in-house video service was just a test and that the White House will continue to offer videos through YouTube and other third party providers. Now, I realize when I comes to political discourse privacy becomes much more important, but every time you read a New York Times article online or make a comment on the web companies are tracking and gathering so much more information. Flickr is now offering video to all of its users and it's adding HD. Previously only Flickr Pro subscribers could upload any video and they paid 24.95 a year. But now free members have the option of uploading two videos per month and Pro subscribers can upload HD video. The videos still have a 90-second, 150-megabyte cap though. Flickr doesn't want to be the next YouTube. Those are all your headlines for today and that does it for me until next time, I'm Mark Licea and you've just been Loaded.
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